The senator Sinema chose to become during her tenure, was NOT the senator Arizonans elected. To claim that Jayapal and/or part of the Progressive Caucus ran Sinema out of the Democratic Party is a gross misrepresentation of reality!
"It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them," Sanders wrote. "First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well."
He chastised Democratic leadership for defending "the status quo" while Americans "are angry and want change."
"Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not," Sanders wrote.
What's bernies answer for inflation? The real reason we got destroyed. Idk throwing stones after an election and calling everyone elitist after Biden made a point to work with him, I don't care for it personally
He doesn't have an answer. And he is indifferent at best to the point that you cannot run on "change" as the incumbent party and get away with it. "We suck, vote for us" is never a winning message. BTW, he actually UNDERperformed Harris in Vermont. That speaks volumes.
I'm not going to pretend that if the Democratic Party dropped social issues completely and were exclusively a left populist party, they'd win back rural Americans who stopped voting for us decades ago for social reasons. This isn't the 1930s/1940s when most Americans save for wealthy English American Republicans still lived either in cities or on farms. If the country wanted hardline left populism as you insist and insist and insist that they do, #1. Bernie Sanders would be President of the USA right now and #2. American politicians like him would be the rule and not the exception. A Democratic Party that is perceived to be for tax hikes for the sake of tax hikes and anti aspirational is a Democratic Party that is doomed to permanent minority status politically. Rightly or wrongly Horatio Alger thinking is ingrained into the country and that's not changing anytime soon.
I'm not suggesting dropping social issues completely. Youi created a strawman there. Since Sanders never got the nomination, we don't know if he could have been elected. A lot of people like his brash "style" beyond economic issues the way the like Trump's. Caution and timidity have failed in 2 of the 3 elections against Trump. The day the Democrats stop quaking over what the Republicans and the media might say about them, is the day it will begin its recovery.
He didn't get the nomination because his "style" and policies are simply not popular with the majority of American voters. If they were, there would be more politicians like him in office. And in states more purple and red than Vermont. Also most Democratic politicians and voters now accept that most Republicans voters are unreachable. The reason they often pay lip service to "bipartisanship" isn't to appease Republicans. It's to appease Democrats who are incapable of accepting that the Republican Party of their fathers and grandfathers is dead and is NEVER coming back. If Barack Obama and Joe Biden had run on "Republicans are evil fascists", both of them would have been laughed off stage and NEVER come close to making it to the White House.
I get that you want the Democratic Party to be more left wing on economic issues. Believe it or not, I'm not unsympathetic to that sentiment. I'm just not going to pretend that left wing populism outside deep blue parts of the country is an electoral winner. Nor am I going to pretend that the Democratic Party is that way because the Big Bad Establishment DNC makes it so. There has always been big money in Democratic Party politics, even during the New Deal heyday. We do ourselves no favors by pretending otherwise.
I would suggest that we can be smarter with some of the social issues. We can support transgender people without supporting sex change surgeries for convicted murderers. We should support accountability for the police but not support "defund the police" and "abolish all prison" positions. We should make this clear as well.
James, I’m staying out of this discussion, but I am not hearing Paleo espouse "hardline left populism", nor claim that this is what the country wants.
Interestingly, the work of Lina Khan, chair of the FTC, has been applauded by both the left and the right (including Josh Hawley!). It’s the billionaire class that is frustrated with her and has been eager to see Khan pushed out.
Well, they won't have to worry about her for at least four years.
I have hope that Tim Walz can carry the kind of populist message that can appeal to the voters we've lost or not been able to get. I think the campaign kept him too much under wraps.
Addressing the way conglomerates were able to price gouge because of their market share. A lot of the price was due to that. Even calling for temporary price controls (I can see the fainting) until the supply problem was cleared.
Bernie Sanders is a 112 year old establishment curmudgeon who should have retired but, like every other politician, is focused on staying in power.
He is also very misogynistic.
Warren is the better voice for progressivism. She tackles it from the top down by focusing on big companies. He prefers pumping money into people's hands directly. Doesn't work.
It's not at all about who is the safer one in their home States. It's about the messenger. Sanders is very abrasive. And, frankly, I find him to be a Fairweather friend. He praised Bidens policies. Especially on the infrastructure bill even though he didn't get everything he wanted. But now that Dems got spanked he's back on his anti party high horse. I'm SO tired of his "Democrats aren't for working people" bleating but he's never specific about exactly what could have been done differently. Biden was and Harris inherited an extremely pro union campaign structure. And indications are Union members were not necessarily the problem anyway. So I'm not really pleased with Fairweather friend Sanders right now. He's never specific about what he would have done differently.
Bernie's steadfast backing of Biden to his very lukewarm embrace of Harris was bizarre to see . .makes you think there was some bad blood spillt at some point.
It was already clear in the state-by-state early exit polls that Trump had the edge in every battlegrounds. I've never once seen the exit polls improve with subsequent rounds. It was clear to me this race was over at 7 p.m. central
Very sad for Christina Bohannan, who massively outperformed Harris in IA01. I don’t see any way for her to overcome an 800 vote deficit. If Libertarians hadn’t screwed up their candidate nominations I am sure Miller-Meeks would have lost
As some of you know, I've been wheelchair bound for years and the problem started with a brain tumor. I've been told over and over to amputate the left foot. Two weeks ago, I had a 4 hour surgery to repair the foot at Cedars in LA.
Yesterday was the unveiling, and it looks good. In a few months, I'll be walking.
So yesterday I transversed SoCal by transit (train, subway, bus and a lot of rolling) to Cedars and met my friend Zack from here and DKE for lunch downtown Los Angeles.
We acknowledged Tuesday then had a wonderful discussion about everything else. I think this type of thing is good for everybody. It was also fun to meet Zack in person after all these years of knowing him online.
In this bleak hour, let us consider some positives. We would be remiss (and paralyzed) if we fail to do so.
America just saw one of the most amazing campaigns of grass-roots work, with heavy involvement of pro-democracy groups and organizations, many of which arose organically. This network needs to be refashioned into a powerful, forward-looking alliance.
(EDIT: We need to immediately make sure those groups do not remain so disheartened that they close shop. The way to do that is to bring them all together, with a seat at the Democratic Party table, and openly discuss how to best meet local- and state-level challenges. Concrete, practical discussion that do not degenerate into unfruitful ideological battles and devastating finger-pointing.)
The Democratic Party should build on this strength and embrace a renewed 50-state strategy. And by that, I mean initially focusing strongly on local- and state-level elections. For starters, we must make sure that we no longer leave any race uncontested!
Let us remember that Democrats, despite the national catastrophe, did rather well in numerous important state and local races.
If I recall correctly, in 2024, more than a thousand state-level legislative races lacked a Democratic candidate. This is intolerable! (Never mind that Republicans left even more such races unchallenged.) Florida Democrats showed us the way: this time they made sure there was a candidate in – I believe – every single race.
EDIT: Let us examine some recently-rejuvenated local and state Democratic parties and learn from "best practices". The young chair in North Carolina, Clayton Anderson, did a phenomenal job, as did Nikki Fried in Florida and Ben Wikler in Wisconsin.
Yup, we fought hard at least and made strides as to future engagement; we knew that the struggle was fighting uphill but unlike in 2022, we didn't back down; tonight I am meeting with the group of local Democrats who worked here to unwind and tell 'war stories'(it should be fun actually)
In an R+4 electorate, it's amazing that the carnage was held down to a point that we still remain with a punchers chance of taking the House(which really bodes well for 2026 on the House side); anyone who played sports knows that 'moral victory's' due indeed suck, but clearly this election was not close to any Red Wave(I saw one post claiming that Harris was 250,000 votes short of winning the White House, though I haven't checked the math); Trump won, but imo his campaign of chaos will be amplified as he goes into the transition and will only get more draconian to the point that his popularity drops even before the inauguration(we shall see); the number of extremely thin losses for our side in the House races already gives us a map of potential targets for 2026, bearing in mind that apparently the 2024 presidential election was the most Republican in history(here again, I'm just going with what others have posted)
People are looking too much into the minutia of this election. We lost because most voters thought the economy stunk and we were the incumbent party. The fact that the election was even close shows that both Trump is a terrible candidate and Harris ran a strong campaign.
Yes indeed. Ben Wikler provided a summary of the elections in Wisconsin. Trumps win was terrible (as was Van Orden's reelection), yet the strong work saved a lot of legislative seats.
Exactly, and Van Orden immediately becomes a target; and I might add that with Baldwin winning again, clearly Wisconsin remains purple where candidate quality truly matters(and if anything, the Republicans will be playing defense in 2026)
100% spot on. From here a true 50 state strategy must be done. It won't be a magic bullet and it will result in some candidates we do not like, but it seems like the only true way forward in the long term.
I'm in Florida, I know the odds; but you nailed it; NEVER give up and contest every seat, everywhere and take no prisoners( we got no national campaign help here yet still fought hard, I'm sure other state folks can say the same)
2020 was 1976 and 2024 is 1980--Four years ago, Biden put together an unwieldy and incoherent winning coalition structurally comparable to what Jimmy Carter put together 44 years earlier. It didn't make sense for any kind of governing mandate and showed signs of coming apart amidst an insurgent populist movement from the right that was capturing the imagination of an aggrieved working class. After a period of inflation, rising crime, and poorly timed foreign policy entanglements, the incumbent party had a low approval rating and was challenged by the face of that conservative populist movement. The unhappy public behaved the way unhappy electorates always do and installed the challenger. While the Dobbs ruling and general demographic changes since 1980 likely prevented Harris from facing an electoral wipeout to the same degree that Carter did, the Democratic Party is left with a shrinking, geographicallly limited and operationally useless husk of a coalition in the aftermath of the realignment.
She Couldn't Overcome These Fundamentals--A full 72% of the country was unhappy. Harris would have really needed to pull a rabbit out of her hat to overcome that. Biden had a 40% approval rating and could probably have been beaten by a ham sandwich. Harris wasn't Biden which kept her in the game but it was gonna be hard as his Vice-President to build up enough distance from him.
Follow the Registrations--The number of people registering as Republicans has gone up in the last four years and the number of people registering as Democrats has gone down. That should have been a much more obvious warning sign that this wasn't gonna happen.
Running on Democracy Was a Loser--I get the Harris campaign's dilemma here. They had to lean into what they figured was their likeliest path to victory, appreciating that courting one group would be to the exclusion of another. Given that her party was already in power and her challenger had a slate of moronic but easily digestible populist policies, it would have been really tough to run on a package of deliverables and compete with him. So she went back to the playbook that Biden abandoned early on of begging voters to care about January 6th as much as Beltway insiders do. Attempting to disqualify your challenger is typically not the closing message of a campaign confident that it's about to win, but it was probably the best weak hand she could play. For the last few days of the campaign, I began to doubt myself and wonder if it was working, but my instincts were right.
At Best, Abortion Was a Zero-Sum Game--Exit polls would seem to confirm that running on Dobbs largely flopped. It may have prevented further losses in such a bad electoral environment, but women still shifted three points toward Trump compared to four years ago. And I'm not surprised men responded the way that they did. The critical mass of abortion messaging in all of this year's Democratic advertising left little time for saying anything to men beyond scolding them for not prioritizing women's reproductive rights. The result was 2014 Mark Udall at a national level.
Where Does Reproductive Rights Messaging Go From Here?--Hard to see how this issue goes away but its salience was vastly overestimated. An "undecided voter focus group" on cable news included a couple of women who were torn between their preference for Harris over abortion rights versus their preference for Trump over the economy, but leaned toward Harris. When it was explained to them that their state (can't remember which) already protected abortion rights and wouldn't be affected by Presidential policy, the women changed their minds and decided they leaned Trump after all. As long as it was only women from other states being denied control over their own bodies, they were okay with it! I took a mental note of this conversation and connected the dots to the gun issue. Until voters are affected personally by violence, it's a "you problem" and has limited salience at the polls. I suspect this partly explains Harris's horrific underperformance in so many blue states, and it makes me question how the Democrats can update their messaging on the reproductive rights issue moving forward.
The Border Mattered--If Trump won, I was prepared to come on here and rage on about three years of astonishingly incompetent border policy being the primary driver, but to be fair, the issue's salience wasn't as abundantly obvious as I expected. Still, there's plenty of connective tissue here to the biggest demographic story of the night....the double-digit shift to Trump among Hispanic voters. After Obama's 2012 re-election powered by record margins from Hispanic voters, the Democrats got it in their heads that they were single-issue immigration voters motivated entirely by maximizing the share of the population who "looks like them". It turned out the only constituencies for lax border policy were the tech sector, Ivy League college faculty members, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Working-class Hispanics wanted no part of it.....and had kind of hoped the Democrats would be able to talk to them about something else in the past 15 years. Since they didn't, the Hispanics moved on.
For the Love of God, Can We Stop Saying This--After several years of insisting upon calling Hispanic people Latinx despite their repeated requests for us not to, elites on the left and in the Democratic Party seem to have finally gotten the message. Now I humbly ask if we can scrub another poisonous term from our vernacular....."someone who looks like me". It's so reductive....and so counter to the mandate voters are sending us through a megaphone.
Selzer Torpedoes Her Reputation--We all failed to take our own advice and beclowned ourselves worshiping at the altar of Ann Selzer's Des Moines Register poll even though it should have been painfully obvious that it was fake news. I stood by my Trump +11 prediction, but even that was insufficient for the extent of the Hawkeye State's redness as the state went Trump +13. But I was guilty of some ninth inning daydreaming of my own about "what the Selzer poll means". In the end, it amounted to little more than fantasizing about what we'd do if we won the lottery just before we found out we weren't holding the winning ticket. Hopefully we won't be seduced so easily next time. As for Iowa, looking at its widening Republican margins compared to Minnesota and Wisconsin, it's clear that it is part of the Upper Midwest in geography only. Culturally and politically, it's poised to behave like the southern Midwest and Plains states.
Running Against a Magician--Donald Trump convinced half of his coalition to vote for him because they believed he was serious about the economic policies espoused in his campaign. He convinced the other half of his coalition to vote for him because they didn't believe he was serious about the economic policies espoused in his campaign. That's one helluva magic trick and I don't know how mere mortals can run against it.
How The Hell Do We Reach People in the 2020s?--In our fragmented media landscape, outreach to voters disconnected from the fast-shrinking legacy media bubble has become a herculean challenge. For most young people in particular, all information is filtered through the podcast bros and Big Tech's algorithms. We don't stand a chance unless we can figure out how to crack this information firewall.
The Future is Autocracy--Once again, Republicans break things and get rewarded for it. After bringing the state of our legislative branch to paralysis, the public gets annoyed and the GOP presents them the solution: an authoritarian strongman who doesn't follow the rules yet cosplays with a copy of the Constitution in hand as he violates it. The public loves it so much they ask for a second helping. After last night, I don't see how challenging this dynamic within the confines of our constitutional system can ever again be expected to prevail in the court of public opinion. Either you get on the bandwagon and take advantage of your newly granted Presidential license for unlimited criminality to make the trains run on time or you get bulldozed by a challenger who does. Tell me I'm wrong?
It's not 1980. If anything, it's 2004. Reagan won 447 electoral votes. And Democrats lost 13 senate seats and over 30 House seats. No comparison.
Biden was the most uncommunicative president I've ever seen. He totally failed to use the bully pulpit and almost seemed to relish laying low. I don't know if it was health related or he just didn't feel like it. But it cost him in popularity and that cost the party. Added to the fact that he had no business running again from the beginning.
Not reductive at all. You made the assertion. 1980 was a watershed election where the dominant ideology switched from governmental intervention in the economy to laissez-faire. This election's focus was on one individual, and one who had been elected before.
As a Latino I agree with your discussion of what made us angry. I see it in my own family. But the truth is, and Bernie said it, the Democrats have all but lost the working class and that isn’t tenable in the long term.
I think it's 1980 but with more partisan voting which saved some dems. People were pissed about the economy so 12 million former dem voters didn't show up to vote.
ok, I'll play;(only speaking for myself, I read every word of your post); though you make quite a few valid assertions, you over play almost every single one; imo this race was nowhere close to a 1980 Reagan win(as Paleo states above) mainly because Reagan had huge coattails and Trump basically had zero coattails; and since you bring up Iowa(I assume you live there), I will use Iowa as an example that can be extrapolated nationwide; with Trump at the top of ticket, 2 out of the 4 Iowa seats were strongly contested(with 1 INCUMBENT barely hanging on), with Reagan on the ballot, those 2 seats would not been close; the 2024 was about Trump and his ability to defy all previous logic as to how he runs so far above his ticket mates; one last thing, Harris was actually 250,000 votes away from winning the White House; in 1980, Carter got less than 100 EVs
I think I sufficiently qualified my 1980 comparison.
And yes, I grew up in Minnesota but now live in Iowa. In terms of whether the two Iowa House races would have been close in 1980, that cuts both ways. There was a lot more ticket-splitting in 1980 so I'm not so confident that it was less likely to have picked up a seat then than today. But in terms of the ability to topple a Republican incumbent in 1980 versus now, with all things being equal, you might be right.
you make some valid points in your post(especially about Trump being a magician); but we here(including you) all know that Trump has not ounce of any 'plans' and always just wings it(after 10 YEARS, he has 'concepts of a plan' for health care); imo the most important point you make is proper messaging to the working class and to Hispanic voters(yes, I know Hispanic is a broad term, but this is a political forum and not a PSA); so, I'll play your game; imo the Democratic party did not remember the James Carville line from 1992(it's the economy stupid !!, which by the way, was Carville telling Clinton to stay on message !); for many months we have been told inflation was the issue from the working class and economic 101 lectures were not an appealing message; so Trump makes simplistic claims(yes, utter nonsense) and gets Millions of workers votes and therefore wins the election
One thing I’ll agree on at least is that the appetite for soft or medium autocracy (illiberal democracy in other words) by Western and developed economy electorates is rising rapidly and is not unique to Trump and thr GOP. We’re caught up in a global trend of democratic norms becoming a partisan/ideological issue and I’m not sure what exactly the solution is - in part for the reasons you express.
I think a large part of it is many, many people (as I've seen in the USA, Canada, and Italy) increasingly see their government as being unresponsive to their needs, so they want politicians to say they will shake things up get things done (easy to say when you aren't in power). The current system of governance is really good at maintaining the status quo and makes it very difficult to enact major changes, so it's not surprising that people have become jaded.
I think this is very much the reason why Trump won in 2016 and a very large part of why he won this year. Voters hear a myriad of reasons why Democrats can't do many things (the filibuster, the courts, the nature of the Senate in general) and I think at some point people stop caring about why Dems can't do these things and only care that Dems aren't doing them. It's why I think Whitmer's "Fix the Damn Roads" was so effective, voters just want you to do something (but you also have to constantly remind them that you're doing it)
Another example is Shapiro fixing that bridge in 2 weeks !! when every 'bean counter' said it was 4 months (Beshear in Kentucky with tornados; even my own Democratic sister praising DeSantis here in Florida during the multiple hurricanes but then voting for Harris); for months we were told inflation, inflation, inflation(perhaps in the future, we'll listen)
Globally the higher paying blue collar jobs are being eliminated by automation and causing a loss of income and social status as a result. Globalism is also eliminating jobs by moving them overseas but even if those jobs stay in their home country the workers have no bargaining power because there are way more people that want those jobs than there are jobs available so the remaining jobs have lower pay and worse benefits than in the past.. Combine that with advancement in the status of women, LGBT people and racial and religious minorities and you see working class people turn toward nationalism, racism, homophobia and misogyny on the far right. Short of being an outright Luddite, there really aren't any easy solutions to this problem.
As you know, I was one of the few buying what you were saying going into the election.
My concern is the biggest problem we have is moral decay of a large subset of the population. I have many neighbors, and even a few long time friends and family, who are very pleasant people to be around, but their thought processes have gone off the rails. I'm unwilling to completely dump people who have been part of my life for 20, 40, 65 years.
It seems we need to interact with these people and try to change the narrative. I have a concern that America doesn't look like Reagan or Bush 2 America but fascist Europe of the 1930s.
We have lost the moral imperative argument and we've got to get it back if we are to survive as a liberal democracy.
We aren't going to get the electoral college reformed, but it seems this year it wouldn't matter. We cannot rely on the courts to save ourselves from bad current or historical legislation. We need to win the thought process.
The breakdown in the transmission of information is at the tip of the spear of the moral decay you speak of. Very few people consume news that isn't filtered through a partisan lens guaranteed to reinforce their preexisting view on absolutely everything. It's vastly worse than when our biggest worry was Rush Limbaugh on the AM radio dial.
It's also that there are no longer any "gatekeepers." Political, media or otherwise. Since I can recall the 60s (in part), 70s and 80s, someone who talks and acts like Trump would never have been able to get a major party nomination then. Not even close. A solution or how to deal with it, is difficult to conjure up at this moment.
There is no question that the silo effect of the media is problematic. The concept that so many on the left didn't see Tuesday coming shows the silo effect on the left also.
What we also need to accept is that not everyone who voted for Trump is a truly awful person. Many are, and I've dumped friends who are in that category. Others are misguided, but decent people. These are the ones we need to reach.
I consider myself a moderate. On California ballot initiatives, I voted in the losing position, to the left of voters in the PR of California. We've got a major messaging problem. We're right, we just need to sell it better. On attacks on candidates and ballot initiatives our response was wimpy at best.
I'm sorry, but I can't agree with you about Trump voters.
He basically went mask off fascist at the end. I'm not sure how anyone who voted for that can be considered a good person.
I realize these people voted the way they did because of the economy. That doesn't change the fact that they voted for mass deportations, a Muslim ban, outlawing LGBT people, and calling in the military on American citizens. We can debate all day about whether Trump will actually do these things, but they were major parts of his platform. The fact that these people voted for this indicates they are, at best, ok with it happening.
We shouldn't defend that any more than we defend the people who voted for Hitler in the 20s because they were upset about the aftermath of World War I.
It's an explanation for why they voted the way they did, sure, but it's not an excuse.
You don't get to vote for massive suffering and then turn around and say you're a good person.
I'm not inclined to forgive anyone who voted for Trump this time, but we'll need some of them if we want to win the White House again. That's just math. A lot of them voted for Biden in 2020 because they were mad at Trump over the pandemic, the weak economy, the general environment of disorder, etc and switched to Trump this time because they were mad at Biden over inflation or the disorder at the border. If the next four years go anything like I expect, a lot of them will be mad at Trump (or Vance?) for various reasons and willing to hear the pitch from the Dem.
They didn't vote for the those things; you don't get to decide what they voted for, They Do; that's our biggest problem in a nutshell(and thank you for posting); we think we get to choose the issues that matter to millions of voters without actually trying to find out what they care about; keep going with this naive political strategy, and you keep losing more elections(that will, indeed, actually take place on time going forward)
I can't recommend this enough. In the past, Alex Jones will never get on 60 Minutes or the nightly news. He would be a crackpot selling a newsletter he put together in his own basement with a second hand ditto machine. Today he has broken through the fringe.and he is not alone. Furthermore, this issue is another major reason why education is dividing us. I have a graduate degree and I suspect that most posters here also have degrees. You learn how to gatekeep in college and grad school when you are taught how to do research and write papers. This isn't a skill that you will learn on your own and if you never went to college you are going to have a much harder time filtering out all the BS you will find online. There is no nice way to say that without sounding condescending either.
To be fair, in 2016 and 2020 Selzer was right and the conventional wisdom was wrong.
As for reaching people, we need to meet the voters where they are, which includes going on the bro podcasts (in addition to all the other varieties of podcasts) and giving the audience our sales pitch. Even the bro podcast audience is mostly casual what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, not MAGA.
I've been converted to Mark thought. Despite rampant material wealth and a booming economy, people want the strongman (or women) We need a liberal AMLO style candidate who like FDR says basically "fuck it,"I'm doing what I want precedent be damned". Polite standards/norms of the past are for losers.
I feel like its more 2016 again. Trump narrowly wins against a female democrat that he can call a semi-incumbent political insider. And I wouldn't be surprised if 2026 is like 2018 with backlash cutting Trump's majorities, and 2028 elects a Dem as President in a trifecta. (Though I will be surprised if Trump's health holds out that long and thus Vance is still only VP.)
I'll be curious which party learns fastest. Does Dem learn from Bernie and Sherrod Brown and address working.class issues better? Or does GOP learn how not to be batshit right wing dogmatic and figure out how to govern. The latter noting that their President is already a lame duck, so no one needs to fear him too much.
Philadelphia had a 740,000 turnout last time. Right now, 671,000 votes have come in. Unless turnout fell, which is possible, there should be around 70,000 still to report.
I'm not sure if they've been factored into the vote count, but there's also provisional ballots to be counted and it's hard to tell the total. Within York it's at least 5000 and Dauphin has 2537. This doesn't include military and overseas ballots which can arrive all the way until November 12.
Yup. I saw that with numerous voters in my ward who had just registered to vote. They voted for Trump, some voted for Ayotte, a few voted in the Congressional race, they didn't vote for anything below that.
It’s been amusing seeing McCormick’s people on Twitter screaming that AP needs to call it now for McCormick and they are misquoting CNN’s Erin Burnett when she said , “Right now McCormick is winning” trying to pass that off as an official projection. Note: CNN has not made an official projection on that race.
Rosen should be good to go. Apart from maybe 5,000 more votes from Nye, the blood red rurals appear to be fully counted - the vast majority of votes left are in Washoe and Clark, with a smattering left in the Carson City area (R, but not THAT R).
Gallego should also be heavily favored. He’s down to +2.2, but 2 of the big R counties (Pinal and Mohave) are very close to done. Meanwhile, there’s probably about 200,000 votes still to be counted in Pima (Tucson, very blue), and of course a huge chunk of Maricopa still to come.
The Philadelphia Inquirer said there were 37,000 uncounted mail ballots as of midnight Wednesday, some of which have presumably been processed within the past 24 hours. Unless that's an error or there are an inexplicable number of uncounted in-person votes, I doubt there's enough to rescue Casey, especially since deep-red Cambria County has reported less than half its votes, which should come out to about 35,000 Trump-heavy ballots. Philly was a huge letdown, both in terms of turnout and percentage margin.
Sounds like it based on the Inquirer’s reporting from Chester, Del Co, Montgomery and Philly. Need red Cambria to finish up which will help McCormick but it all comes down to the Philly area and suburbs. Bucks County I think has more left. That’s the big question grant it Casey narrowly leads in Bucks Country whereas Harris narrowly trails in that district.
Dems also lost a pa state senate seat, but gained a different one. And Dems roared to relevance in the WI state lege. Now only 2 short in the state senate.
Update: Corrected senate margin. Also, Dems look to be at a 45-54 minority in the assembly, a 10 seat gain.
Anyone have any clue where all of our voters went? It seems to me disparity between Democrat and Republican was so huge there has to be some answer. Democrats abandoned for Independent? And what about the "enormous turnout" that was reportedly taking place in major cities including Philly? I mean it makes no sense to me that Bob Caseys, Harris', or Philly party bosses went from ED saying stellar turnout to now its bad. I'm extremely confused where we underperformed, and in the bigger national picture, where 15 million Democratic votes went.
2028 is going to be the most wide open, bloody primary for Democrats in some time. And I'm sure Clyburn will try to rig the outcome again for his preferred candidate and stop the race at SC. Clyburn needs to go and so does Jaimie Harrison. We need a return to straight talking progressive populism.
I loved Whitmer but now I'm feeling super burned about female chances again. And I say that as a woman. Shapiro I admittedly haven't listened to much but he strikes me as a the Newsom of the Midwest. Kinda slick. But idk. Maybe someone else can talk him up.
Too bad Fetterman had that stroke or he'd be perfect. People are so thirsty for authenticity they voted for belligerent Trump. We don't need a classic politician. Buttigieg I love and supported last time but this country has swung so hard against gay people idk if he could do it.
Yeah, where all those voters went is a huge mystery to me. The days leading up to the election, and the minutes and hours after it seems to be from parallel universes.
I think a state-by-state look would be instructive. Already, as Ben Wikler pointed out, WI had an increase in total votes for both candidates (Trump just won more). Michigan and PA were bad for turnout in both directions (fewer D votes, more R). In general, though, the swings were less awful in the swing states (results still pending in NV & AZ) than all the others. My interpretation - the Harris campaign actually was making effective progress by campaigning as such, they were just against such strong headwinds.
We're not gaining voters. The Republicans are and independents really are. So you can not lose any voters and still be smaller share of the electorate.
Thoughts on Klobuchar? Personally, while her treatment of staff is still a problem in my mind, it's indisputable that she remains good at winning beyond the base. (But yeah, sexism is not going away)
The more bleak part of my mind is saying "maybe we need to run assholes for this position so long as they are effective at their job" as it works out so well for the opposite side. Which, I do think, would not be without cost, be it moral character or otherwise.
I mean, maybe true or not, but Klobuchar being a women definitely gets unequal treatment in terms of perceptions re: subordinate treatment. Biden or Trump yelling F-bombs at staff is "tough" and "assertive". A woman doing it is a "bitch" and "cruel".
I was incredibly impressed with how disciplined and on-message her first campaign was against Mark Kennedy in 2006. I don't think she's quite lived up to the potential since then. In addition to the bullying of her staff, her 2020 Presidential campaign messaging leaned too heavily into an artificial folksiness that I didn't think positioned her well for being taken seriously as "the first woman President". But since she has zero chance of getting past the South Carolina-Georgia first-primaries-in-the-nation blockade en route to the nomination, it's a moot point. She's Minnesota bound.
Specific to this year's Senate race, she benefited greatly from having a penniless challenger on record in saying "the bad guys won World War II". Had the Republicans stepped up and nominated a credible challenger, I doubt she'd have outrun the top of the ticket by more than a few points this year.
I remain steadfast that if we attempt a woman a second time (for what I'm not specifying mods 😃 . .could be for Dem party mascot) Whitmer has enough moxie and "fuck you" energy with a smile to do it.
Newsom wouldn't have gotten that bridge fixed so quickly the way Shapiro did. He would've endlessly pontificated about it without actually doing anything.
California has a history of getting public infrastructure repaired after a disaster. The Northridge earthquake took out a lot in West LA including the transition between the 10 and 405, two of the busiest freeways in the world. It was repaired in miraculous time.
You've demonstrated repeatedly that you understand little to nothing about California. Maybe you could stop dumping on it and its politicians and concentrate on your own state, where an odious nepot was succeeded as governor by one of the stupider senators in the last 50 years.
My opinion of Newsom is entirely gathered by hearing what Californians have to say about him, including several people here on TDB/DKE. If you're such a Newsom stan, perhaps you should talk with them.
Okay, thanks. In the meantime I thought I'd talk with you - and I note your admission that your opinion of Newsom is secondhand. As I said, before dumping on California and its governor, perhaps see to matters in your own backyard, which don't appear fully ideal. And please don't react with attacks or assume I'm coming after you; I actually upvote a ton of your posts on a daily basis. But I'm honestly tired of anti-California comments, saw yours, and responded.
more nonsense; you don't have any clue as to why or why not they decide to vote and what matters to them; but you think you get to pass judgement anyway
This is recycled from a comment I made here a few minutes ago, but IMO the biggest issue was that a lot of low-info casual voters who went Biden in 2020 flipped to Trump or stayed home. In 2020 they were mad at Trump over the pandemic, the weak economy, the general environment of disorder, etc. This time they had forgotten most of that but were mad at Biden over inflation or (likely less important) the disorder at the border.
I think this election disproves that swing voters don’t exist, it’s just that they swing between voting and not voting as often as they swing between parties
There are four types of swing/inconsistent voters in terms of who they're willing to consider: D/R, D/R/X, D/X, and R/X with X meaning you don't vote or throw a protest vote. Different types of messaging might work on each group, even the R/X who might be persuaded to sit out with negative messaging.
If Ruben hold on what about him for president in 2028? He’s a Latino male from a swing state who’s a former marine, he seems to balance being progressive but not scare middle of the road voters.
I second the question in your first paragraph-one reason Tuesday hurt so bad is all of the turnout reports (outside of Florida) were so positive, so my confidence was only growing through the day. Was it just smoke and mirrors??
What's their agenda? Seems like the Democratic party would be fine having them?🤔
She ran herself out of the party.
The senator Sinema chose to become during her tenure, was NOT the senator Arizonans elected. To claim that Jayapal and/or part of the Progressive Caucus ran Sinema out of the Democratic Party is a gross misrepresentation of reality!
Jayapal didn't do that at all; Senators barely know Congressmen
"It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them," Sanders wrote. "First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well."
He chastised Democratic leadership for defending "the status quo" while Americans "are angry and want change."
"Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not," Sanders wrote.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/bernie-sanders-rips-democrats-after-kamala-harris-loss-no-great-surprise/ar-AA1tDDKn?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=772b5a35b60b406b9ee5830494ab2830&ei=13
What's bernies answer for inflation? The real reason we got destroyed. Idk throwing stones after an election and calling everyone elitist after Biden made a point to work with him, I don't care for it personally
He doesn't have an answer. And he is indifferent at best to the point that you cannot run on "change" as the incumbent party and get away with it. "We suck, vote for us" is never a winning message. BTW, he actually UNDERperformed Harris in Vermont. That speaks volumes.
64-33 to 63-32. Same difference. And he does have answers. You just might not like them.
Well she did actually get more votes than him
I'm not going to pretend that if the Democratic Party dropped social issues completely and were exclusively a left populist party, they'd win back rural Americans who stopped voting for us decades ago for social reasons. This isn't the 1930s/1940s when most Americans save for wealthy English American Republicans still lived either in cities or on farms. If the country wanted hardline left populism as you insist and insist and insist that they do, #1. Bernie Sanders would be President of the USA right now and #2. American politicians like him would be the rule and not the exception. A Democratic Party that is perceived to be for tax hikes for the sake of tax hikes and anti aspirational is a Democratic Party that is doomed to permanent minority status politically. Rightly or wrongly Horatio Alger thinking is ingrained into the country and that's not changing anytime soon.
I'm not suggesting dropping social issues completely. Youi created a strawman there. Since Sanders never got the nomination, we don't know if he could have been elected. A lot of people like his brash "style" beyond economic issues the way the like Trump's. Caution and timidity have failed in 2 of the 3 elections against Trump. The day the Democrats stop quaking over what the Republicans and the media might say about them, is the day it will begin its recovery.
He didn't get the nomination because his "style" and policies are simply not popular with the majority of American voters. If they were, there would be more politicians like him in office. And in states more purple and red than Vermont. Also most Democratic politicians and voters now accept that most Republicans voters are unreachable. The reason they often pay lip service to "bipartisanship" isn't to appease Republicans. It's to appease Democrats who are incapable of accepting that the Republican Party of their fathers and grandfathers is dead and is NEVER coming back. If Barack Obama and Joe Biden had run on "Republicans are evil fascists", both of them would have been laughed off stage and NEVER come close to making it to the White House.
I get that you want the Democratic Party to be more left wing on economic issues. Believe it or not, I'm not unsympathetic to that sentiment. I'm just not going to pretend that left wing populism outside deep blue parts of the country is an electoral winner. Nor am I going to pretend that the Democratic Party is that way because the Big Bad Establishment DNC makes it so. There has always been big money in Democratic Party politics, even during the New Deal heyday. We do ourselves no favors by pretending otherwise.
I would suggest that we can be smarter with some of the social issues. We can support transgender people without supporting sex change surgeries for convicted murderers. We should support accountability for the police but not support "defund the police" and "abolish all prison" positions. We should make this clear as well.
James, I’m staying out of this discussion, but I am not hearing Paleo espouse "hardline left populism", nor claim that this is what the country wants.
Interestingly, the work of Lina Khan, chair of the FTC, has been applauded by both the left and the right (including Josh Hawley!). It’s the billionaire class that is frustrated with her and has been eager to see Khan pushed out.
Well, they won't have to worry about her for at least four years.
I have hope that Tim Walz can carry the kind of populist message that can appeal to the voters we've lost or not been able to get. I think the campaign kept him too much under wraps.
Addressing the way conglomerates were able to price gouge because of their market share. A lot of the price was due to that. Even calling for temporary price controls (I can see the fainting) until the supply problem was cleared.
Bernie Sanders is a 112 year old establishment curmudgeon who should have retired but, like every other politician, is focused on staying in power.
He is also very misogynistic.
Warren is the better voice for progressivism. She tackles it from the top down by focusing on big companies. He prefers pumping money into people's hands directly. Doesn't work.
Warren under performed Harris significantly. At least Sanders had roughly the same performance.
It's not at all about who is the safer one in their home States. It's about the messenger. Sanders is very abrasive. And, frankly, I find him to be a Fairweather friend. He praised Bidens policies. Especially on the infrastructure bill even though he didn't get everything he wanted. But now that Dems got spanked he's back on his anti party high horse. I'm SO tired of his "Democrats aren't for working people" bleating but he's never specific about exactly what could have been done differently. Biden was and Harris inherited an extremely pro union campaign structure. And indications are Union members were not necessarily the problem anyway. So I'm not really pleased with Fairweather friend Sanders right now. He's never specific about what he would have done differently.
Bernie's steadfast backing of Biden to his very lukewarm embrace of Harris was bizarre to see . .makes you think there was some bad blood spillt at some point.
Misogyny.
Nonsense
Misogynistic? Poppy cock
How is Sanders misogynistic? Please provide evidence to back up your claim.
Bernie is too far left for most of the readership here, and his message will not be taken kindly.
true
- Early exits are not suitable for demographic analysis or comparisons.
- AP/Votecast is still preliminary -- should be adjusted for final vote counts.
- We don't have Catalist. Or Pew validated voters.
It's just too early to have confident takes!
https://x.com/johnmsides/status/1854223290069557597
It was already clear in the state-by-state early exit polls that Trump had the edge in every battlegrounds. I've never once seen the exit polls improve with subsequent rounds. It was clear to me this race was over at 7 p.m. central
Yeah, looked at the CNN exits this morning and if you extrapolate backwards you end up with a 2% Kamala win lol
Very sad for Christina Bohannan, who massively outperformed Harris in IA01. I don’t see any way for her to overcome an 800 vote deficit. If Libertarians hadn’t screwed up their candidate nominations I am sure Miller-Meeks would have lost
Miller-Meeks should be given the nickname of 'landslide'; incredible how she manages to just 'hang on'
She needs to run again in 2026, excellent race to stay so close in this environment
Absolutely👍
All the seats we narrowly lost this year should be prime targets for pickup in 2026.
Can't wait for the cycle when we're on the winning side of a dozen 51-49 races
That's this cycle, if you're talking about the Senate.
Any sense of whether she or Baccam would be up for rematches in 2026?
Off topic, but life moves on.
As some of you know, I've been wheelchair bound for years and the problem started with a brain tumor. I've been told over and over to amputate the left foot. Two weeks ago, I had a 4 hour surgery to repair the foot at Cedars in LA.
Yesterday was the unveiling, and it looks good. In a few months, I'll be walking.
So yesterday I transversed SoCal by transit (train, subway, bus and a lot of rolling) to Cedars and met my friend Zack from here and DKE for lunch downtown Los Angeles.
We acknowledged Tuesday then had a wonderful discussion about everything else. I think this type of thing is good for everybody. It was also fun to meet Zack in person after all these years of knowing him online.
Congratulations on the good news from your doctor.
That's an amazing story, both on the foot/future walking, and the connection with Zach. Thanks for sharing good news!
Congratulations!!!! What a wonderful story, and your point is so well-taken.
In this bleak hour, let us consider some positives. We would be remiss (and paralyzed) if we fail to do so.
America just saw one of the most amazing campaigns of grass-roots work, with heavy involvement of pro-democracy groups and organizations, many of which arose organically. This network needs to be refashioned into a powerful, forward-looking alliance.
(EDIT: We need to immediately make sure those groups do not remain so disheartened that they close shop. The way to do that is to bring them all together, with a seat at the Democratic Party table, and openly discuss how to best meet local- and state-level challenges. Concrete, practical discussion that do not degenerate into unfruitful ideological battles and devastating finger-pointing.)
The Democratic Party should build on this strength and embrace a renewed 50-state strategy. And by that, I mean initially focusing strongly on local- and state-level elections. For starters, we must make sure that we no longer leave any race uncontested!
Let us remember that Democrats, despite the national catastrophe, did rather well in numerous important state and local races.
If I recall correctly, in 2024, more than a thousand state-level legislative races lacked a Democratic candidate. This is intolerable! (Never mind that Republicans left even more such races unchallenged.) Florida Democrats showed us the way: this time they made sure there was a candidate in – I believe – every single race.
EDIT: Let us examine some recently-rejuvenated local and state Democratic parties and learn from "best practices". The young chair in North Carolina, Clayton Anderson, did a phenomenal job, as did Nikki Fried in Florida and Ben Wikler in Wisconsin.
Yup, we fought hard at least and made strides as to future engagement; we knew that the struggle was fighting uphill but unlike in 2022, we didn't back down; tonight I am meeting with the group of local Democrats who worked here to unwind and tell 'war stories'(it should be fun actually)
In an R+4 electorate, it's amazing that the carnage was held down to a point that we still remain with a punchers chance of taking the House(which really bodes well for 2026 on the House side); anyone who played sports knows that 'moral victory's' due indeed suck, but clearly this election was not close to any Red Wave(I saw one post claiming that Harris was 250,000 votes short of winning the White House, though I haven't checked the math); Trump won, but imo his campaign of chaos will be amplified as he goes into the transition and will only get more draconian to the point that his popularity drops even before the inauguration(we shall see); the number of extremely thin losses for our side in the House races already gives us a map of potential targets for 2026, bearing in mind that apparently the 2024 presidential election was the most Republican in history(here again, I'm just going with what others have posted)
I’m honestly flabbergasted at our relative survival downballot in an R+4 environment. The exact opposite of the Obama years
Exactly; which tells us that it most likely can't get worse(if we learn and adapt)
People are looking too much into the minutia of this election. We lost because most voters thought the economy stunk and we were the incumbent party. The fact that the election was even close shows that both Trump is a terrible candidate and Harris ran a strong campaign.
Exactly; and the down ballot wins for the Democratic party are actually telling us a lot going forward
Yes indeed. Ben Wikler provided a summary of the elections in Wisconsin. Trumps win was terrible (as was Van Orden's reelection), yet the strong work saved a lot of legislative seats.
https://x.com/benwikler/status/1854360524319785431
Exactly, and Van Orden immediately becomes a target; and I might add that with Baldwin winning again, clearly Wisconsin remains purple where candidate quality truly matters(and if anything, the Republicans will be playing defense in 2026)
100% spot on. From here a true 50 state strategy must be done. It won't be a magic bullet and it will result in some candidates we do not like, but it seems like the only true way forward in the long term.
I'm in Florida, I know the odds; but you nailed it; NEVER give up and contest every seat, everywhere and take no prisoners( we got no national campaign help here yet still fought hard, I'm sure other state folks can say the same)
I am familiar with the related concepts rationalization and especially intellectualization. They're actually old friends metaphorically.
Is there a point you are trying to make?🤔
No I was responding to the implied reminder of the post.
Lol, ok
Election Takeaways....
2020 was 1976 and 2024 is 1980--Four years ago, Biden put together an unwieldy and incoherent winning coalition structurally comparable to what Jimmy Carter put together 44 years earlier. It didn't make sense for any kind of governing mandate and showed signs of coming apart amidst an insurgent populist movement from the right that was capturing the imagination of an aggrieved working class. After a period of inflation, rising crime, and poorly timed foreign policy entanglements, the incumbent party had a low approval rating and was challenged by the face of that conservative populist movement. The unhappy public behaved the way unhappy electorates always do and installed the challenger. While the Dobbs ruling and general demographic changes since 1980 likely prevented Harris from facing an electoral wipeout to the same degree that Carter did, the Democratic Party is left with a shrinking, geographicallly limited and operationally useless husk of a coalition in the aftermath of the realignment.
She Couldn't Overcome These Fundamentals--A full 72% of the country was unhappy. Harris would have really needed to pull a rabbit out of her hat to overcome that. Biden had a 40% approval rating and could probably have been beaten by a ham sandwich. Harris wasn't Biden which kept her in the game but it was gonna be hard as his Vice-President to build up enough distance from him.
Follow the Registrations--The number of people registering as Republicans has gone up in the last four years and the number of people registering as Democrats has gone down. That should have been a much more obvious warning sign that this wasn't gonna happen.
Running on Democracy Was a Loser--I get the Harris campaign's dilemma here. They had to lean into what they figured was their likeliest path to victory, appreciating that courting one group would be to the exclusion of another. Given that her party was already in power and her challenger had a slate of moronic but easily digestible populist policies, it would have been really tough to run on a package of deliverables and compete with him. So she went back to the playbook that Biden abandoned early on of begging voters to care about January 6th as much as Beltway insiders do. Attempting to disqualify your challenger is typically not the closing message of a campaign confident that it's about to win, but it was probably the best weak hand she could play. For the last few days of the campaign, I began to doubt myself and wonder if it was working, but my instincts were right.
At Best, Abortion Was a Zero-Sum Game--Exit polls would seem to confirm that running on Dobbs largely flopped. It may have prevented further losses in such a bad electoral environment, but women still shifted three points toward Trump compared to four years ago. And I'm not surprised men responded the way that they did. The critical mass of abortion messaging in all of this year's Democratic advertising left little time for saying anything to men beyond scolding them for not prioritizing women's reproductive rights. The result was 2014 Mark Udall at a national level.
Where Does Reproductive Rights Messaging Go From Here?--Hard to see how this issue goes away but its salience was vastly overestimated. An "undecided voter focus group" on cable news included a couple of women who were torn between their preference for Harris over abortion rights versus their preference for Trump over the economy, but leaned toward Harris. When it was explained to them that their state (can't remember which) already protected abortion rights and wouldn't be affected by Presidential policy, the women changed their minds and decided they leaned Trump after all. As long as it was only women from other states being denied control over their own bodies, they were okay with it! I took a mental note of this conversation and connected the dots to the gun issue. Until voters are affected personally by violence, it's a "you problem" and has limited salience at the polls. I suspect this partly explains Harris's horrific underperformance in so many blue states, and it makes me question how the Democrats can update their messaging on the reproductive rights issue moving forward.
The Border Mattered--If Trump won, I was prepared to come on here and rage on about three years of astonishingly incompetent border policy being the primary driver, but to be fair, the issue's salience wasn't as abundantly obvious as I expected. Still, there's plenty of connective tissue here to the biggest demographic story of the night....the double-digit shift to Trump among Hispanic voters. After Obama's 2012 re-election powered by record margins from Hispanic voters, the Democrats got it in their heads that they were single-issue immigration voters motivated entirely by maximizing the share of the population who "looks like them". It turned out the only constituencies for lax border policy were the tech sector, Ivy League college faculty members, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Working-class Hispanics wanted no part of it.....and had kind of hoped the Democrats would be able to talk to them about something else in the past 15 years. Since they didn't, the Hispanics moved on.
For the Love of God, Can We Stop Saying This--After several years of insisting upon calling Hispanic people Latinx despite their repeated requests for us not to, elites on the left and in the Democratic Party seem to have finally gotten the message. Now I humbly ask if we can scrub another poisonous term from our vernacular....."someone who looks like me". It's so reductive....and so counter to the mandate voters are sending us through a megaphone.
Selzer Torpedoes Her Reputation--We all failed to take our own advice and beclowned ourselves worshiping at the altar of Ann Selzer's Des Moines Register poll even though it should have been painfully obvious that it was fake news. I stood by my Trump +11 prediction, but even that was insufficient for the extent of the Hawkeye State's redness as the state went Trump +13. But I was guilty of some ninth inning daydreaming of my own about "what the Selzer poll means". In the end, it amounted to little more than fantasizing about what we'd do if we won the lottery just before we found out we weren't holding the winning ticket. Hopefully we won't be seduced so easily next time. As for Iowa, looking at its widening Republican margins compared to Minnesota and Wisconsin, it's clear that it is part of the Upper Midwest in geography only. Culturally and politically, it's poised to behave like the southern Midwest and Plains states.
Running Against a Magician--Donald Trump convinced half of his coalition to vote for him because they believed he was serious about the economic policies espoused in his campaign. He convinced the other half of his coalition to vote for him because they didn't believe he was serious about the economic policies espoused in his campaign. That's one helluva magic trick and I don't know how mere mortals can run against it.
How The Hell Do We Reach People in the 2020s?--In our fragmented media landscape, outreach to voters disconnected from the fast-shrinking legacy media bubble has become a herculean challenge. For most young people in particular, all information is filtered through the podcast bros and Big Tech's algorithms. We don't stand a chance unless we can figure out how to crack this information firewall.
The Future is Autocracy--Once again, Republicans break things and get rewarded for it. After bringing the state of our legislative branch to paralysis, the public gets annoyed and the GOP presents them the solution: an authoritarian strongman who doesn't follow the rules yet cosplays with a copy of the Constitution in hand as he violates it. The public loves it so much they ask for a second helping. After last night, I don't see how challenging this dynamic within the confines of our constitutional system can ever again be expected to prevail in the court of public opinion. Either you get on the bandwagon and take advantage of your newly granted Presidential license for unlimited criminality to make the trains run on time or you get bulldozed by a challenger who does. Tell me I'm wrong?
It's not 1980. If anything, it's 2004. Reagan won 447 electoral votes. And Democrats lost 13 senate seats and over 30 House seats. No comparison.
Biden was the most uncommunicative president I've ever seen. He totally failed to use the bully pulpit and almost seemed to relish laying low. I don't know if it was health related or he just didn't feel like it. But it cost him in popularity and that cost the party. Added to the fact that he had no business running again from the beginning.
Reductive assessment. Given that you responded to it three minutes after it was posted, you clearly didn't read it.
Not reductive at all. You made the assertion. 1980 was a watershed election where the dominant ideology switched from governmental intervention in the economy to laissez-faire. This election's focus was on one individual, and one who had been elected before.
I qualified the assertion at the end of the opening paragraph you didn't read.
That didn't clarify as much as simply saying, it could have been worse.
As a Latino I agree with your discussion of what made us angry. I see it in my own family. But the truth is, and Bernie said it, the Democrats have all but lost the working class and that isn’t tenable in the long term.
I think it's 1980 but with more partisan voting which saved some dems. People were pissed about the economy so 12 million former dem voters didn't show up to vote.
Another better point but no way is it close to 1980 in the overall carnage
ok, I'll play;(only speaking for myself, I read every word of your post); though you make quite a few valid assertions, you over play almost every single one; imo this race was nowhere close to a 1980 Reagan win(as Paleo states above) mainly because Reagan had huge coattails and Trump basically had zero coattails; and since you bring up Iowa(I assume you live there), I will use Iowa as an example that can be extrapolated nationwide; with Trump at the top of ticket, 2 out of the 4 Iowa seats were strongly contested(with 1 INCUMBENT barely hanging on), with Reagan on the ballot, those 2 seats would not been close; the 2024 was about Trump and his ability to defy all previous logic as to how he runs so far above his ticket mates; one last thing, Harris was actually 250,000 votes away from winning the White House; in 1980, Carter got less than 100 EVs
I think I sufficiently qualified my 1980 comparison.
And yes, I grew up in Minnesota but now live in Iowa. In terms of whether the two Iowa House races would have been close in 1980, that cuts both ways. There was a lot more ticket-splitting in 1980 so I'm not so confident that it was less likely to have picked up a seat then than today. But in terms of the ability to topple a Republican incumbent in 1980 versus now, with all things being equal, you might be right.
you make some valid points in your post(especially about Trump being a magician); but we here(including you) all know that Trump has not ounce of any 'plans' and always just wings it(after 10 YEARS, he has 'concepts of a plan' for health care); imo the most important point you make is proper messaging to the working class and to Hispanic voters(yes, I know Hispanic is a broad term, but this is a political forum and not a PSA); so, I'll play your game; imo the Democratic party did not remember the James Carville line from 1992(it's the economy stupid !!, which by the way, was Carville telling Clinton to stay on message !); for many months we have been told inflation was the issue from the working class and economic 101 lectures were not an appealing message; so Trump makes simplistic claims(yes, utter nonsense) and gets Millions of workers votes and therefore wins the election
One thing I’ll agree on at least is that the appetite for soft or medium autocracy (illiberal democracy in other words) by Western and developed economy electorates is rising rapidly and is not unique to Trump and thr GOP. We’re caught up in a global trend of democratic norms becoming a partisan/ideological issue and I’m not sure what exactly the solution is - in part for the reasons you express.
I think a large part of it is many, many people (as I've seen in the USA, Canada, and Italy) increasingly see their government as being unresponsive to their needs, so they want politicians to say they will shake things up get things done (easy to say when you aren't in power). The current system of governance is really good at maintaining the status quo and makes it very difficult to enact major changes, so it's not surprising that people have become jaded.
I think this is very much the reason why Trump won in 2016 and a very large part of why he won this year. Voters hear a myriad of reasons why Democrats can't do many things (the filibuster, the courts, the nature of the Senate in general) and I think at some point people stop caring about why Dems can't do these things and only care that Dems aren't doing them. It's why I think Whitmer's "Fix the Damn Roads" was so effective, voters just want you to do something (but you also have to constantly remind them that you're doing it)
Ding, ding, ding; a simple 4 words(!!!!!) message that a person of any level of education can easily understand
Another example is Shapiro fixing that bridge in 2 weeks !! when every 'bean counter' said it was 4 months (Beshear in Kentucky with tornados; even my own Democratic sister praising DeSantis here in Florida during the multiple hurricanes but then voting for Harris); for months we were told inflation, inflation, inflation(perhaps in the future, we'll listen)
(but you also have to constantly remind them that you're doing it)
And precisely this is what the Biden Administration failed to do!
Easily my biggest complaint. His administration did a lot of good things! But no one knew about them!
Biden was a good chief executive but a terrible communicator.
Globally the higher paying blue collar jobs are being eliminated by automation and causing a loss of income and social status as a result. Globalism is also eliminating jobs by moving them overseas but even if those jobs stay in their home country the workers have no bargaining power because there are way more people that want those jobs than there are jobs available so the remaining jobs have lower pay and worse benefits than in the past.. Combine that with advancement in the status of women, LGBT people and racial and religious minorities and you see working class people turn toward nationalism, racism, homophobia and misogyny on the far right. Short of being an outright Luddite, there really aren't any easy solutions to this problem.
As you know, I was one of the few buying what you were saying going into the election.
My concern is the biggest problem we have is moral decay of a large subset of the population. I have many neighbors, and even a few long time friends and family, who are very pleasant people to be around, but their thought processes have gone off the rails. I'm unwilling to completely dump people who have been part of my life for 20, 40, 65 years.
It seems we need to interact with these people and try to change the narrative. I have a concern that America doesn't look like Reagan or Bush 2 America but fascist Europe of the 1930s.
We have lost the moral imperative argument and we've got to get it back if we are to survive as a liberal democracy.
We aren't going to get the electoral college reformed, but it seems this year it wouldn't matter. We cannot rely on the courts to save ourselves from bad current or historical legislation. We need to win the thought process.
The breakdown in the transmission of information is at the tip of the spear of the moral decay you speak of. Very few people consume news that isn't filtered through a partisan lens guaranteed to reinforce their preexisting view on absolutely everything. It's vastly worse than when our biggest worry was Rush Limbaugh on the AM radio dial.
It's also that there are no longer any "gatekeepers." Political, media or otherwise. Since I can recall the 60s (in part), 70s and 80s, someone who talks and acts like Trump would never have been able to get a major party nomination then. Not even close. A solution or how to deal with it, is difficult to conjure up at this moment.
There is no question that the silo effect of the media is problematic. The concept that so many on the left didn't see Tuesday coming shows the silo effect on the left also.
What we also need to accept is that not everyone who voted for Trump is a truly awful person. Many are, and I've dumped friends who are in that category. Others are misguided, but decent people. These are the ones we need to reach.
I consider myself a moderate. On California ballot initiatives, I voted in the losing position, to the left of voters in the PR of California. We've got a major messaging problem. We're right, we just need to sell it better. On attacks on candidates and ballot initiatives our response was wimpy at best.
I'm sorry, but I can't agree with you about Trump voters.
He basically went mask off fascist at the end. I'm not sure how anyone who voted for that can be considered a good person.
I realize these people voted the way they did because of the economy. That doesn't change the fact that they voted for mass deportations, a Muslim ban, outlawing LGBT people, and calling in the military on American citizens. We can debate all day about whether Trump will actually do these things, but they were major parts of his platform. The fact that these people voted for this indicates they are, at best, ok with it happening.
We shouldn't defend that any more than we defend the people who voted for Hitler in the 20s because they were upset about the aftermath of World War I.
It's an explanation for why they voted the way they did, sure, but it's not an excuse.
You don't get to vote for massive suffering and then turn around and say you're a good person.
If we take that position, we are cutting off over 50% of voters and we will lose and lose and lose.
If we aren't going to try to win a chunk back, we might as well start the divorce proceedings to divide real estate.
I'm not inclined to forgive anyone who voted for Trump this time, but we'll need some of them if we want to win the White House again. That's just math. A lot of them voted for Biden in 2020 because they were mad at Trump over the pandemic, the weak economy, the general environment of disorder, etc and switched to Trump this time because they were mad at Biden over inflation or the disorder at the border. If the next four years go anything like I expect, a lot of them will be mad at Trump (or Vance?) for various reasons and willing to hear the pitch from the Dem.
They didn't vote for the those things; you don't get to decide what they voted for, They Do; that's our biggest problem in a nutshell(and thank you for posting); we think we get to choose the issues that matter to millions of voters without actually trying to find out what they care about; keep going with this naive political strategy, and you keep losing more elections(that will, indeed, actually take place on time going forward)
I can't recommend this enough. In the past, Alex Jones will never get on 60 Minutes or the nightly news. He would be a crackpot selling a newsletter he put together in his own basement with a second hand ditto machine. Today he has broken through the fringe.and he is not alone. Furthermore, this issue is another major reason why education is dividing us. I have a graduate degree and I suspect that most posters here also have degrees. You learn how to gatekeep in college and grad school when you are taught how to do research and write papers. This isn't a skill that you will learn on your own and if you never went to college you are going to have a much harder time filtering out all the BS you will find online. There is no nice way to say that without sounding condescending either.
To be fair, in 2016 and 2020 Selzer was right and the conventional wisdom was wrong.
As for reaching people, we need to meet the voters where they are, which includes going on the bro podcasts (in addition to all the other varieties of podcasts) and giving the audience our sales pitch. Even the bro podcast audience is mostly casual what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, not MAGA.
Joe Rogan in particular is not exactly the face of the religious right.
Trump really papers over a lot of sharp splits between the Christian nationalists and the podbros
I think you meant pull a rabbit out of her hat! But a lot to think about here.
Ah yes. Thanks for that. Mixed my metaphors.
I've been converted to Mark thought. Despite rampant material wealth and a booming economy, people want the strongman (or women) We need a liberal AMLO style candidate who like FDR says basically "fuck it,"I'm doing what I want precedent be damned". Polite standards/norms of the past are for losers.
I feel like its more 2016 again. Trump narrowly wins against a female democrat that he can call a semi-incumbent political insider. And I wouldn't be surprised if 2026 is like 2018 with backlash cutting Trump's majorities, and 2028 elects a Dem as President in a trifecta. (Though I will be surprised if Trump's health holds out that long and thus Vance is still only VP.)
I'll be curious which party learns fastest. Does Dem learn from Bernie and Sherrod Brown and address working.class issues better? Or does GOP learn how not to be batshit right wing dogmatic and figure out how to govern. The latter noting that their President is already a lame duck, so no one needs to fear him too much.
In IL-HD114, former State Rep. LaToya Greenwood (D)’s comeback bid fell just short, as incumbent State Rep. Kevin Schmidt (R) won again narrowly.
https://www.bnd.com/news/politics-government/election/article295002549.html
Rosen takes the lead in Nevada. I'm curious whats left in Pennsylvania
Philadelphia had a 740,000 turnout last time. Right now, 671,000 votes have come in. Unless turnout fell, which is possible, there should be around 70,000 still to report.
NBC still showing only 87% reporting in Philadelphia. Hope springs eternal.
I'm not sure if they've been factored into the vote count, but there's also provisional ballots to be counted and it's hard to tell the total. Within York it's at least 5000 and Dauphin has 2537. This doesn't include military and overseas ballots which can arrive all the way until November 12.
671k in this race. The city already counted 708k ballots.
Ok. Apparently, I assume younger, voters just voted for Trump and left the rest of the ballot blank. In a number of states.
Yup. I saw that with numerous voters in my ward who had just registered to vote. They voted for Trump, some voted for Ayotte, a few voted in the Congressional race, they didn't vote for anything below that.
It’s been amusing seeing McCormick’s people on Twitter screaming that AP needs to call it now for McCormick and they are misquoting CNN’s Erin Burnett when she said , “Right now McCormick is winning” trying to pass that off as an official projection. Note: CNN has not made an official projection on that race.
Rosen should be good to go. Apart from maybe 5,000 more votes from Nye, the blood red rurals appear to be fully counted - the vast majority of votes left are in Washoe and Clark, with a smattering left in the Carson City area (R, but not THAT R).
Gallego should also be heavily favored. He’s down to +2.2, but 2 of the big R counties (Pinal and Mohave) are very close to done. Meanwhile, there’s probably about 200,000 votes still to be counted in Pima (Tucson, very blue), and of course a huge chunk of Maricopa still to come.
Thanks for the info
The Philadelphia Inquirer said there were 37,000 uncounted mail ballots as of midnight Wednesday, some of which have presumably been processed within the past 24 hours. Unless that's an error or there are an inexplicable number of uncounted in-person votes, I doubt there's enough to rescue Casey, especially since deep-red Cambria County has reported less than half its votes, which should come out to about 35,000 Trump-heavy ballots. Philly was a huge letdown, both in terms of turnout and percentage margin.
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/pennsylvania-mail-ballots-count-philly-20241106.html
That's what I was afraid of. There's already finger pointing going on between the Harris campaign and the city party.
Mail ballots in Philly were about 10-1 D. If these are the only ballots left in the state, Casey has a decent chance.
However, there may be some stragglers from various counties. A lot of uncertainty.
Are there still small numbers of mail ballots in other suburban Philly counties?
According to NY Times, about 6,000 in Delaware and less than 5,000 in Montgomery.
Sounds like it based on the Inquirer’s reporting from Chester, Del Co, Montgomery and Philly. Need red Cambria to finish up which will help McCormick but it all comes down to the Philly area and suburbs. Bucks County I think has more left. That’s the big question grant it Casey narrowly leads in Bucks Country whereas Harris narrowly trails in that district.
Well I am glad that McCormick is at least whining (we'll just have to wait and see; crossing my fingers)
Called for McCormick about 15 min ago.
Bob Casey is out. However, Rosen is likely to win as more votes from Clark County seem to be giving her the lead.
Dem house seats in Nevada are safe, according to Ralston.
With the Clark dump, here's what happened in the House:
CD-01:
Titus (D) +5.82% --> Titus +6.97%
CD-03:
Lee (D) +1.52% --> Lee +2.34%
CD-04 (which we've already called)
Horsford (D) +6.98% --> Horsford +12.56%
(The vote in Nye will net some votes for R John Lee, but it's done)
Frank Burns, the majority maker for Dems in the PA house, is up 1400 votes as ballots are counted slowly due to a big scan error: https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/PA/Cambria/122831/web.345435/#/detail/0012
Update 11:45: Now 1300 vote lead with more counted.
If Frank Burns survives this, he is an electoral god.
Dems also lost a pa state senate seat, but gained a different one. And Dems roared to relevance in the WI state lege. Now only 2 short in the state senate.
Update: Corrected senate margin. Also, Dems look to be at a 45-54 minority in the assembly, a 10 seat gain.
That’s terrific news!
What site do you use to track these races?
Google has been good.
Just one more race telling us something(if we take it in a positive way forward)
DDHQ projects Rosen has won
Anyone have any clue where all of our voters went? It seems to me disparity between Democrat and Republican was so huge there has to be some answer. Democrats abandoned for Independent? And what about the "enormous turnout" that was reportedly taking place in major cities including Philly? I mean it makes no sense to me that Bob Caseys, Harris', or Philly party bosses went from ED saying stellar turnout to now its bad. I'm extremely confused where we underperformed, and in the bigger national picture, where 15 million Democratic votes went.
2028 is going to be the most wide open, bloody primary for Democrats in some time. And I'm sure Clyburn will try to rig the outcome again for his preferred candidate and stop the race at SC. Clyburn needs to go and so does Jaimie Harrison. We need a return to straight talking progressive populism.
I loved Whitmer but now I'm feeling super burned about female chances again. And I say that as a woman. Shapiro I admittedly haven't listened to much but he strikes me as a the Newsom of the Midwest. Kinda slick. But idk. Maybe someone else can talk him up.
Too bad Fetterman had that stroke or he'd be perfect. People are so thirsty for authenticity they voted for belligerent Trump. We don't need a classic politician. Buttigieg I love and supported last time but this country has swung so hard against gay people idk if he could do it.
Yeah, where all those voters went is a huge mystery to me. The days leading up to the election, and the minutes and hours after it seems to be from parallel universes.
I think a state-by-state look would be instructive. Already, as Ben Wikler pointed out, WI had an increase in total votes for both candidates (Trump just won more). Michigan and PA were bad for turnout in both directions (fewer D votes, more R). In general, though, the swings were less awful in the swing states (results still pending in NV & AZ) than all the others. My interpretation - the Harris campaign actually was making effective progress by campaigning as such, they were just against such strong headwinds.
We're not gaining voters. The Republicans are and independents really are. So you can not lose any voters and still be smaller share of the electorate.
Thoughts on Klobuchar? Personally, while her treatment of staff is still a problem in my mind, it's indisputable that she remains good at winning beyond the base. (But yeah, sexism is not going away)
I think you covered it.
The more bleak part of my mind is saying "maybe we need to run assholes for this position so long as they are effective at their job" as it works out so well for the opposite side. Which, I do think, would not be without cost, be it moral character or otherwise.
I mean, maybe true or not, but Klobuchar being a women definitely gets unequal treatment in terms of perceptions re: subordinate treatment. Biden or Trump yelling F-bombs at staff is "tough" and "assertive". A woman doing it is a "bitch" and "cruel".
I was incredibly impressed with how disciplined and on-message her first campaign was against Mark Kennedy in 2006. I don't think she's quite lived up to the potential since then. In addition to the bullying of her staff, her 2020 Presidential campaign messaging leaned too heavily into an artificial folksiness that I didn't think positioned her well for being taken seriously as "the first woman President". But since she has zero chance of getting past the South Carolina-Georgia first-primaries-in-the-nation blockade en route to the nomination, it's a moot point. She's Minnesota bound.
Specific to this year's Senate race, she benefited greatly from having a penniless challenger on record in saying "the bad guys won World War II". Had the Republicans stepped up and nominated a credible challenger, I doubt she'd have outrun the top of the ticket by more than a few points this year.
Yeah, if the GOP had run, say, Erik Paulsen Klobuchar probably wins by 6-8.
I remain steadfast that if we attempt a woman a second time (for what I'm not specifying mods 😃 . .could be for Dem party mascot) Whitmer has enough moxie and "fuck you" energy with a smile to do it.
Actually, third time
Also she may have ran against the worst senate candidate in the country.
Newsom wouldn't have gotten that bridge fixed so quickly the way Shapiro did. He would've endlessly pontificated about it without actually doing anything.
California has a history of getting public infrastructure repaired after a disaster. The Northridge earthquake took out a lot in West LA including the transition between the 10 and 405, two of the busiest freeways in the world. It was repaired in miraculous time.
Newsom wasn't the Governor at the time.
California has a governmental infrastructure in place to respond to emergencies. Newsom as governor has responded to several disasters effectively.
You've demonstrated repeatedly that you understand little to nothing about California. Maybe you could stop dumping on it and its politicians and concentrate on your own state, where an odious nepot was succeeded as governor by one of the stupider senators in the last 50 years.
Huh? WTF prompted this?
My opinion of Newsom is entirely gathered by hearing what Californians have to say about him, including several people here on TDB/DKE. If you're such a Newsom stan, perhaps you should talk with them.
Okay, thanks. In the meantime I thought I'd talk with you - and I note your admission that your opinion of Newsom is secondhand. As I said, before dumping on California and its governor, perhaps see to matters in your own backyard, which don't appear fully ideal. And please don't react with attacks or assume I'm coming after you; I actually upvote a ton of your posts on a daily basis. But I'm honestly tired of anti-California comments, saw yours, and responded.
They refused to vote for a woman of color.
simplistic at best; not all Trump voters are racist
They're just ok with his racism, which is functionally the same thing.
more nonsense; you don't have any clue as to why or why not they decide to vote and what matters to them; but you think you get to pass judgement anyway
This is recycled from a comment I made here a few minutes ago, but IMO the biggest issue was that a lot of low-info casual voters who went Biden in 2020 flipped to Trump or stayed home. In 2020 they were mad at Trump over the pandemic, the weak economy, the general environment of disorder, etc. This time they had forgotten most of that but were mad at Biden over inflation or (likely less important) the disorder at the border.
I think this election disproves that swing voters don’t exist, it’s just that they swing between voting and not voting as often as they swing between parties
There are four types of swing/inconsistent voters in terms of who they're willing to consider: D/R, D/R/X, D/X, and R/X with X meaning you don't vote or throw a protest vote. Different types of messaging might work on each group, even the R/X who might be persuaded to sit out with negative messaging.
I mean . .isn't that by definition a swing voter? They're always the low-info types who widely oscillate seemingly incoherently.
If Ruben hold on what about him for president in 2028? He’s a Latino male from a swing state who’s a former marine, he seems to balance being progressive but not scare middle of the road voters.
I watched his senate debate and honestly he doesn't strike me as a very strong presence the way Kelly does. I was underwhelmed with Gallego.
I'm good with nominating an Astronaut(and of course Gabby as First Lady)
I second the question in your first paragraph-one reason Tuesday hurt so bad is all of the turnout reports (outside of Florida) were so positive, so my confidence was only growing through the day. Was it just smoke and mirrors??
Ralston now says Rosen will win. After saying yesterday that she was a long shot.
https://x.com/RalstonReports/status/1854548770098393228
Thank goodness he had the opportunity to be wrong one last time!
Lol
That should be a layup for him, I wonder why he thought she was a longshot
Once again we'll have another likely repeat of 2022 where the incumbent Democratic freshman Senator in NV wins by a narrow or sliver of a margin.